Windows XP Undelete

May 25, 2009 1:42 AM

I don't understand how I could have gotten myself into such a mess, so quickly. I had specifically taken this weekend to organize a large mess of files (on my PC) that I have had for a long time. I've put hours and hours (about 30) of work into this. An hour ago I attempted to delete a file and noticed that I had made a mistake, and accidentally deleted a huge branch of my work.

Up till this point, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I checked the recycle bin, nothing. Hmm, I have a habit of shift-deleting, eh. I downloaded a few free undelete apps, nothing. I downloaded more, nothing. I just deleted this a few minutes ago and it is as if it never existed. This was a huge folder with hundreds of files. It would take me longer to restore it than to do the entire weekends worth of reorganizing. I don't understand. How can it be this easy to destroy a weekends worth of work? Can you give me any tips that might save me?

I'm sorry. I'm just so angry right now. I am absolutely stunned that a single keypress could ruin so much work. Is it me, or are computers absolute shite? How could anything be designed this poorly? Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

posted by Gusy to computers & internet (17 comments total)

This is a strangely-worded question that comes across more as a rant.

Possibilities:
1. Stop shift-deleting. The recycle bin is there for a reason.
2. Get a Mac with Time Machine.
3. Backup, backup, backup. I should do so more myself.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:47 AM on May 25

Don't download anything more!. The files aren't erased, they're just thrown on top of the metaphorical garbage heap, and the space they occupied has been flagged as free and ready to be overwritten. Turn off the machine to prevent any more new or temporary files to overwrite your work. I don't know what undelete/data recovery software is tops for PCs, but your local computer shop would be glad to charge you an hour or two of labour to run the (mostly automated) recovery. You'll of course want to recover the data to a different drive, so as to not interfere with the scanning.

On preview: Yeah, it's mainly a rant but he's also asking for help. He's obv. upset at potentially losing 30 hrs of work, and while he forms the question in terms of usability it's clear he's chiefly concerned with recovery-after-the-fact and not so much the finer points of HCI or interface design. Though you are right on all three points, dunkadunc. Esp. #3, to which I'd add "practice restoring occasionally."
posted by now i'm piste at 1:58 AM on May 25

I use NTFS Undelete. Obviously, it's for NTFS drives only, but it does the job quite well in my experience.
posted by Solomon at 2:21 AM on May 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sometimes in Windows if you press Ctrl-Z (which is "Undo" in most Windows applications) it will undo things like moving or deleting files; if by any chance you still have the window open where you deleted the file, you might just try going there and pressing Ctrl-Z. (Also "Edit... Undo" in the menus.)

Agreeing with others here, the Recycle Bin is the thing that's designed to prevent this and by shift-deleting all the time you're intentionally overriding it. If you're going to intentionally override the safety measures what the heck could anyone design into computers that would protect you from yourself?
posted by XMLicious at 2:46 AM on May 25

This is not a helpful comment for your immediate problem... But for future backup needs, I recommend mozy.com - an automatic backup service that keeps several file versions.. 2Gb storage for free, $5/mon for unlimited use (click here for a 10% reduction)
posted by nielm at 4:29 AM on May 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

Vista's 'previous versions' is actually awesome in this respect. It's bailed my ass several times, including a set I played only a few days ago - I broke a patch configuration but it had helpfully created a shadow copy of the whole folder I was working in before I broke it.

Though technically only available in Ultimate, it's available to non-ultimate users through shadowexplorer.

There's a heap of useful windows tools at shellcity.net, but simply by using your browser, the cache could be trampling the remnants of non-shadowed files (shadow copies are protected). Hunt utilities on another machine, and run from a USB stick if you can.

Vista onwards and OS-X will make shadow copies, altho I've heard mixed things about time machine. Make sure you at least zip, tar, rar or 7zip your files up to another volume before sinking huge amounts of time into shifting files around. Network storage through a linux box is very cheap these days, and it's easy to get SAMBA and windows working, NFS for macs, and both to support both.

Dropbox is a great tool for stuffing your data in the cloud, where you can be sure you can get it back easily. I like this tool so much, I'm not even whoring for a referal code here. You'll have to pay to get more than a few gig of data, but look at it this way - how much value do you put on the 30 hours you lost moving files, and how much value do you place on creating/finding them in the first place?

Ultimately, I've learnt the hard way; really, don't let this stuff get out of control, and make sure you backup and keep your files organised, unless you're happy to lose (as you've found out, whether by accident, bug, or oversight) that data.

Also, I know how unhelpful everyone's 'shoulda backedup' advice sounds in this situation. They're trying to help, really!
posted by davemee at 4:42 AM on May 25

If you make backups, this problem goes away. Storage is really cheap, nowadays. Also, keep in mind that half the time I this kind of question posted, it's "my hard drive just stopped spinning up / is making a sound like an electric pencil sharpener, how screwed am I?" Hard drives lose files, whether it's because you bumped something or they just stopped working. You need to keep backups.

I don't have a particular Windows backup system to recommend (my solution is a bit techy and Unix-specific), but it's probably best to set up something that runs automatically every night. Be sure to test it now and then, to make sure that it's actually copying stuff. Other people will likely suggest things.

From a usability standpoint, the best solution to this I've seen is a filesystem feature on FreeBSD (a kind of Unix) that lets you mount an previous snapshot of a filesystem as a different drive; it'd be like being able to ask to load and browse S:\ as a read-only snapshot of [Yesterday_morning's]C:\ . It wouldn't help with a broken hard drive, but it solves the accidental deletion problem. (Of course, using that feature probably requires editing config files and typing commands, but good UI can't fix a feature that's fundamentally broken at the system level.)
posted by silentbicycle at 4:43 AM on May 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

Windows sets limits on how much your recycle bin can hold. You can override these limits but most people don't. If you put more into it than the limit, it will immediately delete it entirely (i.e. not leave it in the recycle bin). It should warn you but this is Windows.
posted by TheRaven at 5:02 AM on May 25

Last semester, a friend of mine lost a class paper the night before it was due (like you, friend is a fan of the old shift+del and somehow managed to delete a big chunk of it, close it, and save it). Friend got docked marks while rewriting it because the professor didn't actually believe that could happen in this day and age.

I'm working on a thesis that I really don't want to rewrite, so I got an external hard drive and a USB stick, and send a daily e-mail to myself with the document attached. I have my raw data backed up on an external hd at my folks' house.

That said, I recently deleted an entire video folder on my computer (I was also organizing files). It wasn't important stuff by any means, but it could have been. I feel your pain. Go get yourself a USB stick for the small jobs, and save save save.
posted by futureisunwritten at 6:27 AM on May 25

TheRaven: The recycle bin gets skipped if you hold Shift down when choosing to delete a file, regardless of whether it would have been under the limit.
posted by odinsdream at 7:12 AM on May 25

Go to a friend's house for any downloading, and put downloaded tools on a flash drive. Everything you do on your pc may compromise files.
posted by theora55 at 7:21 AM on May 25

I assume you're running Windows. What version? I assume you don't have some kind of automated backup? What about System Restore? That's on by default.

Storage is really cheap, nowadays
You bet. NewEgg has plenty of great deals on external hard drives for on-site backup.

Is it me, or are computers absolute shite? How could anything be designed this poorly?
Computers do exactly what you tell them to. You pressed delete, so it deleted. You wouldn't expect your car to turn left when you moved the wheel to the right, right?
posted by JuiceBoxHero at 7:41 AM on May 25

He's using Windows XP, as per the title of the thread.
posted by infinityjinx at 10:28 AM on May 25

Are you SURE you didn't accidentally drag the folder in question into another folder, rather than deleting it?
posted by Roach at 11:14 AM on May 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

Recuva if you haven't tried it yet.
posted by deezil at 2:45 PM on May 25

TheRaven: "Windows sets limits on how much your recycle bin can hold. You can override these limits but most people don't. If you put more into it than the limit, it will immediately delete it entirely (i.e. not leave it in the recycle bin). It should warn you but this is Windows."

Actually, I usually get a dialog box that says "This file is too big for the Recycle Bin. Permanently delete?"
posted by IndigoRain at 9:37 PM on May 25

JuiceBoxHero: "I assume you're running Windows. What version? I assume you don't have some kind of automated backup? What about System Restore? That's on by default. ?"

System Restore does not restore "documents" only system files.

Your best bet is to install undelete software on a new partition but if you've been messing about with the partition the data was on, it might be too late already.
posted by turkeyphant at 11:39 PM on May 25